Using NotEye images for Adom wiki

[Randomizer]

The question to The Creator.

I'm one of the people keeping the ADOM Wiki up to date. I'd like to start updating the monster/items/locations pages with the graphic images so that to the moment when ADOM appears in Steam we will have an updated wiki for new gamers.

The question is - may we use the images from gfx\adom\ directory? I'm not sure because the license of wikia makes them available for commercial use so anyone can take them and make their own ADOM ^{with blackjack and hookers©}.

If we may then could you please provide us with the mapping of which image corresponds to which item/monster. I mean dirs: gfx\adom\NPC, gfx\adom\items.

[Zeno]

No idea about the question, but I think I have read somewhere that there are some other problems with Wikia... for some (probably good) reason NetHack wiki guys decided to move to another server, and the Wikia admins do not allow to delete the old one or put links to the new server, which is bad.

[Ravenmore]

Hm... I think someone contacted me about this last year. Pretty sure I sent them over to Thomas, but ye gods I didn't know about that point in wikia's terms. This is absolutely unacceptable.

- You can't use the images on wikia under these conditions. At the moment all rights belong to Thomas, and he certainly won't agree for anyone else to have a commercial license for these images. Not at this point in time, anyway.

- However, if you can find a place where you have control over the rights stuff, or at least where the images will be used under a strictly non-commercial license then I think Thomas would not mind. I'd certainly like to see a wiki complete with new images, but wikia's requirements are just totally unacceptable in this case.

- One way or another getting official permission directly from Thomas would be required at this stage, because of the closed license.

- We talked about opening the strict license somewhat, so that all images are available for non-commercial use and you guys don't have to worry about asking permission like this. I certainly wouldn't mind if other developers used them in prototypes for example, until they can get their own graphics. But that hasn't happened yet, and it's very low on the priorities list. Choosing the right license is actually very tricky stuff, and there's just so much more important stuff going on right now.

- For future reference: I don't know the status of the audio files, but I assume it's the same as with graphics: strict closed license, please contact Thomas before you do anything with them on the internets . These are less likely to become open for non-comm use though.

Hope this clears any confusion. For obvious reasons it might be best to respectfully give Thomas some time before contacting him about gfx/audio use.

[Randomizer]

Ok, then probably we got to move from the wikia and use a dedicated server for that.

The plan is:
- find a hoster with dedicated server or virtual server. The costs for hosting can be crowdfunded if necessary or partly redeemed with google ads.
- get the sysadministartor for initial setup + regular software updates.
- get the mediawiki engine up and running. As far as I can see the wikia is using plain mediawiki without any plugins aside for automatic mailing.
- somehow import the data from wikia (are there any scripts for that? I'm not sure wikia admins will happily allow us to export all the stuff using mediawiki export plugin)
- explicitly set a license to the more restrictive (For the start CC NonCommercial-NoDerivatives will be ok)
- inform the adom wikia editors and ask them to change to new wiki (there are only 5-10 active editors at the moment, so every one of them could be reached personally)
- promote the new wiki - ask Thomas to put the links on the adom.de site and maybe promote it for a small time in Google.
- put the message on the wikia that it's an old wiki and will never be updated.

So, a lot of work. The question is:
- Does someone actually need it? For me the wiki is quite useful and I always have it opened whenever I roam in the wilderness of Ancardia. I am quite ok with ASCII mode but for new players graphic mode would be much more preferred.
- Are there any volunteers for some tasks from this list or can give good advices of how do some of it

[_Ln_]

Hm... I think someone contacted me about this last year. Pretty sure I sent them over to Thomas, but ye gods I didn't know about that point in wikia's terms. This is absolutely unacceptable.

That would be me. It seems I haven't done enough research on wikia policies. It is then for the best that we haven't reached to any kind of agreement as I would have made a huge blunder.

As for moving the wikia, I don't think it is that hard in technical terms - entire page xml database can be lifted without much trouble and setting up just requires some background work (at least someone already did that in the past). If anything, having a fully controllable wiki engine is much more useful and entertaining. The only question is whether the community needs it and whether Thomas wants a more "official" wiki that the current one on wikia. Due to recent events it's best if we don't push this now in any case.

Edit:
There is also a {{fairuse}} tag for wikia images, which corresponds to the following situation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use
and can be probably used to post images on wikia and protect them from getting used somewhere else although the whole thing is borderline on wikia policies.